The execution of the King destroyed the alliance which Cromwell had established between Argyle and the Independents. Argyle would have been glad to preserve it, but his power depended on the clergy and the middle classes, both deeply incensed with the sectaries who had dared to kill a Scottish king. The day after the news of the King’s death reached Edinburgh, Charles II. was there proclaimed King, not of Scotland only, but of Great Britain and Ireland. The Scottish envoys in England protested against the late revolution, denouncing the establishment of toleration or any other change in the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and demanding that Charles II., “upon just satisfaction given to both kingdoms,” should be placed upon his father’s throne. The Long Parliament retorted by expelling the envoys and declaring that their protest laid “the grounds of a new and bloody war.” Henceforth indeed the war took a new character,—it was no longer a constitutional 277but a national struggle. Scotland like Ireland was attempting to dictate to England the form of government which it should choose, and thus the English contest for self-government inevitably widened into a contest for the supremacy of the British Isles.
Nothing delayed war between Scotland and England but the difficulty of effecting an agreement between Charles and the Scots. Except on their own terms the Presbyterians would not fight for him, and till no other way of regaining his crown was left Charles would not accept their terms.
The Scottish Commissioners demanded that he should not only accept the Covenant and the Presbyterian system for Scotland, but pledge himself to impose them on England and Ireland. As he declined to force Presbyterianism on those two kingdoms without the consent of their parliaments the negotiations were broken off in May, 1649, and while Charles prepared to join Ormond in Ireland, Montrose was commissioned to call the Scottish Royalists once more to arms.
In September, 1649, Charles landed at Jersey on his way to Ireland, but Cromwell’s victories checked his further progress. Before the year ended, it was evident that if he was to be restored it must be by Scottish hands, and in February, 1650, he returned to Holland. Necessity left him no choice. “Indeed,” wrote a Scottish agent from Jersey, “he is brought very low; he has not bread both for himself and his servants, and betwixt him and his brother not one English shilling.” Negotiations began again at Breda in March, 1650. The Scots required him to take 278both Covenants, to impose Presbyterianism on England and Ireland, and to disavow both Ormond and Montrose. Charles struggled hard to modify these conditions, and the treaty by which he agreed to them was not signed till he was actually on his voyage. He hoped that when he came to Scotland his presence would win concessions from the Covenanters, and a royalist party would gather round him. But he found himself treated more as a captive than a king. English Royalists who had accompanied him from Holland were ordered to leave the country, Scottish Royalists were excluded from his army and his Court, and when he reached Edinburgh he saw, fixed over the tower of the Tolbooth, and fresh from the hangman’s hands, the head of Montrose.
The diplomacy of the King had sacrificed his noblest champion. Instead of holding Montrose back till the negotiations ended, he had urged him to immediate action. “Your vigorous proceeding,” he wrote, “will be a good means to bring them to such a moderation ... as may produce a present union of that whole nation in our service.” When the Scottish envoys at Breda demanded the abandonment of Montrose, Charles agreed to order him to disband his troops with a secret promise of their indemnity. But the countermands came too late. Knowing that Charles was treating with the Covenanters, and that he was in danger of disavowal, Montrose still resolved to spend his life for the King’s service. In March, 1650, he arrived in the Orkneys with a little body of Danish and German mercenaries. In April, with about twelve hundred men and forty horse, he advanced through Caithness to the south of Sutherland. There, at Carbisdale, on April 27th, Major Strachan, with two hundred and fifty of David Leslie’s disciplined cavalry, fell upon him in his march south, scattered his handful of horsemen, and cut to pieces his foreign infantry. Montrose escaped from the rout, and wandered amongst the hills till starvation obliged him to seek shelter. Macleod of Assynt gave him up to the Scottish Government, and on May 21st he was hanged at the market-cross in the High Street of Edinburgh.
THE SEAL OF THE “TRIERS.”
THE DUNBAR MEDAL.
HEAD OF CROMWELL, BY THOMAS SIMON.
MEDAL REPRESENTING CROMWELL AS LORD GENERAL OF THE ARMY.
BY THOMAS SIMON.
OBVERSE. ? ? ? REVERSE.
A CROWN-PIECE OF THE PROTECTOR ISSUED IN 1658.
(From Henfrey’s “Numismata Cromwelliana.”)
279About the time of Montrose’s death, Cromwell returned to England. Parliament had voted that both Fairfax and Cromwell should command against the Scots, the one as General, the other in his old post as Lieutenant-General. But when Fairfax found that the Council of State meant to invade Scotland, he laid down his commission. The best refutation of the theory that Cromwell sought to undermine Fairfax in order to obtain his post is the vigour with which he endeavoured to persuade him to keep it. It was morally certain, urged Cromwell, that the Scots meant to invade England. War was unavoidable. “Your excellency will soon determine whether it is better to have this war in the bowels of another country than our own.” But nothing could overcome Fairfax’s repugnance to an offensive war. Human probabilities, he repeated, were not sufficient ground to make war upon our brethren, the Scots. The truth was, he had long been dissatisfied with the results of the revolution in which events had given 280him so prominent a part, and seized any plausible excuse for retirement. As he persisted, his resignation was accepted, and on the 26th of June, 1650, Cromwell became, by Act of Parliament, Captain-General and Commander-in-chief of all the forces of the Commonwealth. “I have not sought these things,” he wrote to a friend; “truly I have been called unto them by the Lord, and therefore am not without some assurance that He will enable His poor worm and weak servant to do His will.”
At the end of July, Cromwell entered Scotland with an army of 10,500 foot and 5500 horse. His old comrade, David Leslie, to whom the Scots had given the command, could bring about eighteen thousand foot and eight thousand horse to meet him, but as Leslie’s soldiers were much inferior in quality, he stood resolutely on the defensive. Marching along the coast and drawing supplies mainly from the English fleet, Cromwell found the Scottish army intrenched between Leith and Calton Hill. A month passed in marches around Edinburgh, in fruitless skirmishes, and unsuccessful attempts to draw the Scots from their unassailable fastnesses. Leslie took no risks, and met each move with unfailing skill. At the end of August, victuals grew scarce in the English camp and disease was rife. With a “poor, shattered, hungry, discouraged army,” Cromwell fell back on Dunbar, intending to fortify the town to be used as a magazine and basis of operations, and to await reinforcements from Berwick. Leslie, pressing hard on his heels, occupied Doon Hill, which overlooks Dunbar, and seized the passes 281between Dunbar and Berwick. Thanks to his knowledge of the country he had again outman?uvred Cromwell, and the Scots boasted that they had Cromwell in a worse pound than the King had had Essex in Cornwall.
Cromwell owned the greatness of the danger.
“We are,” he wrote, “upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty, and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination.”
His sixteen thousand men were reduced now to eleven thousand, and some officers proposed that the foot should be shipped on the fleet, while the horse endeavoured to cut their way through the enemy. But their General remained, as he expressed it, “comfortable in spirit and having much hope in the Lord.”
Leslie’s original plan was to fall on Cromwell’s rear as he tried to force his way along the road to Berwick, but the parliamentary committee in his camp ordered him to descend the hill and bar Cromwell’s route. Seeing that Cromwell did not continue his march, he believed he was shipping his guns, and perhaps part of his infantry, and thought all he had to do was to prevent the escape of the enemy. Accordingly, on September 2nd, Leslie moved his army from the Doon hill to the gentle slopes at its foot, intending to attack the next day. 282His left was covered in flank, and to some extent in front too, by the steep ravine of the Brock burn, which ran obliquely from the hill to the sea and separated the positions of the two armies. His infantry were posted in the centre, with their backs to the hillside. On the right, where the ground was more level and open, he had massed two-thirds of his cavalry. Leslie had twenty-two thousand men to Cromwell’s eleven thousand, and told his soldiers they would have the English army, alive or dead, by seven next morning.
When Cromwell examined the new position of the Scots, he saw that his opportunity had come at last. Leslie’s left, shut in between the hill and the ravine, was practically useless, and his centre, cramped by the hill in its rear, had too little room to man?uvre. Both Cromwell and Major-General Lambert agreed that if the Scottish right were beaten their whole army would be endangered.
That evening, in answer to Leslie’s movement, Cromwell drew up his forces along the line of the ravine and about Broxmouth House, as if his sole purpose was to stand on the defensive. The night was stormy and wet, and after one or two alarms the Scots were convinced that he did not mean to attack. Just before dawn Cromwell pushed a strong body of horse and foot across the ravine, and under cover of a false attack on their left massed all the troops he could against their right and their centre. Lambert and Fleetwood, with six regiments of horse, attacked the Scottish right, while Monck, with about three thousand or four thousand foot, engaged 283their centre, supported by the fire of Cromwell’s guns from the other side of the ravine. The Scots were taken unprepared, but as soon as they could get into battle order numbers told. Charging, with the slope in their favour, the Scottish lancers broke one of Lambert’s regiments, and Monk’s division was repulsed and forced to give ground. At this critical moment, Cromwell himself came up with the reserve, consisting of three regiments of foot and one of horse. His own regiment of horse fell on the flank of the Scottish cavalry, Lambert’s troopers charged again, and after a short, sharp struggle the Scottish right wing was broken through and through. Simultaneously Cromwell’s and Pride’s foot regiments furiously assailed the advancing Scottish infantry, and “at push of pike did repel the stoutest regiment the enemy had,” while all along the line the English foot, once more advancing, drove back the Scots. Some of Leslie’s infantry stood stubbornly, but a cavalry charge on their exposed flank completed their discomfiture. At Cromwell’s direction, the flank attack became more and more pronounced, till the Scottish centre was rolled up from right to left; and, penned in the triangle between the hill and the ravine, the Scottish infantry became a helpless mob, unable either to fight or fly.
“Horse and foot,” says one of Cromwell’s officers, “were engaged all over the field and the Scots all in confusion. The sun appearing upon the sea I heard Noll say, ‘Now let God arise, and His enemies shall be scattered,’ and following us as we slowly marched I heard him say, ‘I profess they run,’ and then was the 284Scots army all in disorder and running, both right wing and left and main battle. They routed one another after we had done their work on their right wing.”
Three thousand men fell in the battle, and ten thousand were taken prisoners. While Leslie collected the shattered remnant of his army at Stirling, Cromwell occupied Edinburgh and Leith, and all the eastern portion of the Scottish Lowlands. Edinburgh Castle held out, and the south-west was still in arms.
After Dunbar, as before it, Cromwell’s strongest wish was not a conquest but an agreement which would restore peace between the two nations.
“Give the State of England,” he wrote to the Committee of Estates, “that satisfaction and security for their peaceable and quiet living beside you, which may in justice be demanded from those who have, as you, taken their enemy into their bosom, whilst he was in hostility against them.”
He had opened his campaign with manifestos protesting the affection of England for the Scots, and demonstrating their error in supporting the Stuarts. These overtures the leaders of the Independents urged him to renew. They regarded it as a fratricidal war. The grim Ireton expressed the fear that Cromwell had not been sufficiently forbearing and long-suffering. Subtle St. John drew a distinction between Scots and Irish, reminding him that although the Irish were atheists and papists to be ruled with a rod of iron, the Scots were truly children 285of God, and he must still endeavour to heap coals of fire on their heads. Cromwell, whose heart “yearned after the godly in Scotland,” began now a new set of expostulations, directed particularly to the ministers whose influence had frustrated his appeals to the nation. He charged them with pretending a reformation and laying the foundation of it in getting worldly power for themselves; with perverting the Covenant to serve secular ends; with claiming infallibility for their doctrine just as the Pope did. Their claim to control the civil government he dismissed with few words. “We look on ministers as helpers of, not lords over, God’s people.” Then he refuted with like vigour the claim of the Kirk to prohibit dissent in order to prevent heresy.
“Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man who would keep all wine out of the country, lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge.”
Finally, he rebuked them for their hypocrisy and their blindness. Was it not hypocritical “to pretend to cry down all Malignants, and yet to receive and set up the head of them, and to act for the kingdom of Christ in his name?” Was it not blindness to shut their eyes to the meaning of their late defeat? God had given judgment in their controversy at Dunbar, and they refused to see it. “Did not you solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought not you and we to think with 286fear and trembling of the hand of the great God in this mighty and strange appearance of his?”
Either events or Cromwell’s arguments produced their effect in the Scotch camp. There were great searchings of heart amongst devout Presbyterians, and a schism broke out in the army. Rigid Covenanters renounced worldly alliances and compliance with an ungodly monarch. “I desire to serve the King faithfully,” said Colonel Ker, “but on condition that the King himself be subject to the King of Kings.” Colonel Strachan, after some negotiation with Cromwell, laid down his commission. Ker, with three or four thousand Westland Whigs, refused obedience to the Committee of Estates, and tried to wage war independently. But attempting to surprise Lambert, at Hamilton, in Lanarkshire, on December 1st, he was taken prisoner, his force scattered, and the whole of the south-west fell into Cromwell’s power.
More lasting was the division amongst the clergy. One party, headed by Gillespie and Guthry, published a Remonstrance repudiating the idea of fighting for Charles II. till he had proved his fitness to be a covenanted king, and condemning those who had closed their eyes to his insincerity. The Remonstrants, as they were termed, would have no alliance with either Malignants or Engagers. The other party, laxer in its moral views, and moved more by national than religious feeling, was ready to accept the compromises which the necessities of the State demanded. When Parliament passed resolutions allowing Malignants and Engagers to fight 287in the national ranks, it consented to their employment on a simple profession of penitence. For the next ten years the quarrels of Resolutioners and Remonstrants made up Scotland’s ecclesiastical history.
Cromwell had foreseen the political consequences of Dunbar. “Surely,” he predicted, “it’s probable the Kirk has done their do. I believe their King will set up upon his own score now.” The prediction now came true. Charles had suffered great humiliations since he came to Scotland. He had submitted to all conditions and sworn many kinds of oaths. He had been obliged to declare his sorrow for his father’s hostility to the work of reformation and his mother’s love of idolatry. He had seen the Scottish ranks purged of Royalists, and had been forbidden to approach the army that was fighting in his name. At last, events had brought the Parliament round to his policy. From the date of his coronation at Scone on January 1, 1651, Charles was King of Scotland in fact as well as name. Partly driven by necessity, because the ecclesiastical divisions had deprived him of his strongest supporters, partly lured by hope, because Charles offered to marry his daughter, Argyle fell in with the King’s policy. But each stage in its development diminished his influence. First he had to share his p............